EU leaders overcame their differences on a refugee deal with Turkey late Thursday that they will present to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on Friday when he joins their summit.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council chief Donald Tusk will sit down with the Turkish premier Friday morning to present the joint EU position. Then all 28 leaders will meet Davutoğlu to thrash out a deal to send migrants who reach Greece illegally back to Turkey, while Syrian refugees in Turkey are resettled in Europe.

“Tomorrow’s negotiations won’t be very easy,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters at the end of the first day of the summit, adding however that she hoped an agreement with Turkey to control the flow of refugees into Europe could be put in place “relatively quickly.”

The agreement among the 28 EU leaders addressed some countries’ concerns about the legality of the deal and the need for assurances that refugees being returned to Turkey from Greece will be treated according to U.N. conventions, EU sources said.

“This has to be done in respect of human rights,” said French President François Hollande. “It will be up to the European Commission to monitor whether this is respected.”

Merkel said it was essential that the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the EU should happen within days of asylum-seekers being taken from the Greek islands to Turkey.

The EU’s offer includes the opening of new areas of EU membership negotiations with Turkey but makes no specific commitments on when that will happen, other than saying it will be “as soon as possible,” EU sources said.

One of the EU leaders’ main challenges will be to give Ankara a clear enough signal that membership talks will be opened, without getting into details that would risk opening up a row with EU-member Cyprus over Turkey’s 1974 occupation of the northern part of the island. Hollande said EU leaders “took care not to mention” specific chapters of the accession process.

The offer also includes a promise to lift visa requirements for Turks traveling to the EU — but only after Ankara meets the full list of 72 “benchmarks” required of all countries getting the same treatment, the sources said.

The EU will hold off on payment of an additional €3 billion Turkey wanted on top of an already pledged €3 billion to help refugees, saying the extra money will only be given after the first tranche is spent and if there are positive results, they said.

“You know the things that are expected from the Turkish side, which will of course be discussed further tomorrow: money, the question of visa liberalization and the opening of new chapters,” said Merkel.

Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel cautioned, however, as he left the summit that “a deal with Turkey cannot be a blank check.”

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klaus

We need somebody to say aloud that this is all nonsense! Turkey will not respect any deal. Erdogan is saying bad things about Europe in Turkey, lashing out at Europe for its internal interests. His “refugees” are well integrated in Turkey, investing in their small stores or candy shops, and trade between Syria and Turkey has been on its pre-war levels. Erdogan lies on purpose that refugees are a big burden for Turkey. The main concern for him are Kurds and he wants Europe to tell him he can act in Syria freely, putting the issues of refugees as the matter of life or death. He is a viscious partner and a goos trader. Europe is naive and irrational. Too bad we do not have more Orbans but Merkel and Juncker who implement free mason strategy.

Posted on 3/18/16 | 11:34 AM CET

Christos Rotsas

Turkey is blackmailing Europe as a matter of course. Today she is using the illegal immigrants from Syria and elsewhere ; in the 70s she used opium grown inland to get its way with Europe and mainly the US. This is what Turkey is, plain and simple.
A more sure way to get Turkey to behave and keep her promises is the EU to threaten that it will recognize a Kurdish depart entity in Syria and or Iraq. But you need balls to do that and Europe is lacking them right now. So, the theater will continue .